CoLA Meetings

City of Eugene photo collage by Uoregon14 licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

 

AIA-SWO’s Eugene-Springfield Committee on Local Affairs (CoLA) invites all interested chapter members to participate in the committee’s meetings and its advocacy efforts. 

CoLA’s mandate is to promote views, policies, and positions that largely represent the professionally informed opinion of AIA-SWO members on topics of community-wide importance. One of the committee’s goals is to elevate the stature and visibility of architects in general by representing design professionals as active, organized, and concerned public citizens. CoLA assumes an activist posture, engaging design-related issues in the glare of the public eye and perhaps within the political arena. 

CoLA maximizes its effectiveness by taking on a limited number of issues at any moment. The AIA-SWO board does recommend issues for CoLA to consider. The issues the committee chooses to address are of relevance to the profession, of community interest, and come with implications beyond the scope of any single building project. The committee members arrive at consensus agreement on each issue after studying it in detail. They may or may not then decide to formally adopt a public position on the matter. 

Since CoLA’s inception in late 2015, the committee has been active on numerous fronts: 

• CoLA met with COE staff members regarding the draft Community Design Handbook and provided them with useful feedback.
• The committee sent two separate letters to the mayor, council, and city manager regarding planning of the stillborn South Willamette Special Area Zone (one regarding how to move forward in the wake of SW-SAZ being halted by the city council, and another regarding the Oregon Consensus Assessment process).
• CoLA met with individuals representing a variety of perspective on topics of civic interest; these included representatives from WECAN, new mayor Lucy Vinis, and neighborhood-advocate Paul Conte.
• Members of the committee attended multiple public meetings on a variety of topics of interest to CoLA.
• CoLA wrote an opinion piece for the Register-Guard endorsing extension of the Eugene downtown urban renewal district.
• The committee wrote another opinion piece for Eugene Weekly commending the City of Eugene and Lane County for their collaborative efforts to reshape Eugene’s civic center. 

The roster of current committee members is: 

• Scott Clarke, AIA – PIVOT Architecture; committee chair 
• Austin Bailey, AIA – Rowell Brokaw Architects 
• Eric Gunderson, AIA – PIVOT Architecture 
• Stan Honn, AIA – AIA-SWO immediate past-president and board representative on CoLA 
• Randy Nishimura, AIA – Robertson/Sherwood/Architects pc 
• Travis Sheridan, Assoc. AIA – Willard C. Dixon Architect, LLC 

CoLA wants to hear from all AIA-SWO members to fairly consider and/or represent the full diversity of our architectural community (the committee is admittedly lacking in gender balance at the moment). 

CoLA meets regularly in The Octagon on the fourth Tuesday of each month, at noon. AIA-SWO’s Thursday’s @ 3:00 e-newsletter announces these standing meetings, and they’re also listed on the chapter website’s home page. Additionally, the committee may convene additional meetings or forums as deemed necessary when time-sensitive issues arise. Be sure to weigh in and voice your concerns and opinions at any of CoLA’s meetings!


What:  AIA-SWO Eugene-Springfield Committee on Local Affairs Committee meetings 

When:  From noon to 1:00 PM, on the fourth Tuesday of each month 

Where:  The Octagon, 92 East Broadway, Eugene